Watch the Live Launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the Rocket That Might Take Us to Mars

It's been a long road for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. Since plans of its development were first announced in 2011, the project has seen numerous setbacks. Now, the super-sized rocket is finally set to lift off today, February 6, and anyone with an internet connection can watch it in real time.

If it works, Falcon Heavy will make history as the world's most powerful rocket in operation. In what amounts to three of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets strapped together, the rocket boasts 27 engines capable of transporting almost 64 metric tons (141,000 pounds) of payload past Earth's atmosphere.

There's a reason no other rocket has been built with that kind of firepower: All those engines need to work in sync in order to produce the 5 million pounds of thrust that will lift the load off the ground. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has emphasized that the risk of failure is high, even though everything went according to plan in the engine test-fire.

The success of today's launch would change the future of space travel. A rocket capable of carrying such heavy loads could be used to eventually send supplies, habitat modules, and people to Mars. In the short term, it would make shooting heavier satellites into orbit a possibility.

The only extra cargo Falcon Heavy is carrying today is Elon Musk's Tesla roadster. If all goes as planned, the rocket will launch the car into the Hohmann transfer orbit around the sun, which is about equivalent to the distance from our planet to Mars.

Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida today, February 6, between 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET. You can catch the livestream of the event at SpaceX's official YouTube channel.

Just because you don't work for NASA doesn't mean you'll never make it as an astronaut. In the world of private space tourism, a little training could be all you need. And there's an app for that.

Space Nation, a Finnish space tourism startup, recently launched Space Nation Navigator, which the company touts as the first astronaut training app in the world. The app aims to train future space travelers using games, quizzes, and fitness challenges that fall into three categories: "body," "mind," and "social."

Each of the challenges is tailored to help you develop the skills you'd need to survive in space—even the mundane ones. One mission is called "Did you clean behind the fridge?" and is designed to highlight the unpleasant chores crew members on the ISS have to do to keep things tidy. There are "survival" quizzes that test your knowledge of how to properly build a fire, read a map, and dispose of your poop in the forest. The app also plugs into your smartphone fitness data so that you can participate in athletic challenges, like a 650-foot sprint designed to train you to escape a meteor impact zone.

iStock

"Space Nation Navigator offers a way for anyone, anywhere to have a 15-minute astronaut experience every day. These astronaut skills—team building, problem solving, positive life hacks—are not just vital to survive in space," Space Nation CEO Kalle Vähä-Jaakkola said in a press statement. "They are also crucial in your daily life."

New challenges are added to your queue every few hours, and you can compete against other users for high scores. If you get enough points, you can become eligible for real-life training experiences with Space Nation, including a trip to Iceland. In 2019, Space Nation plans to hold an international competition to find one astronaut that the program will send to space.

If you're going to start training, we suggest you take some of the tests Project Mercury applicants faced back in 1958 to see how you'd stack up against the first NASA astronauts.

Get in a car at night and drive on a straight road, then look at the moon. The angle of the moon in respect to your point of view doesn’t change; it seems like the moon is following you wherever you go. Meanwhile, things that are really close to you—like electric poles, roadside buildings, and trees—seem to fly by really fast.

The effect is known as parallax. Things that are close seem to move faster and “travel more distance” (not really) than things that are far away.

In the video above, there are several objects in perspective. The light in the center, which represents the sun, was placed so far away you can barely see it move.

The sun is only eight light-minutes away; that’s 146 million km on average. At human scale it seems like a lot, but in cosmic distances it is nothing. Orion, for example, has stars that are from 243 to 1360 light years away from us. Imagine traveling at the speed of light for 1360 years. That’s how far these stars are. And these are not even the farthest stars. Some stars are Giga-light years away from us.

Now, with the proper precision instruments you can indeed notice the parallax in distant stars, just not with the naked eye. Furthermore, our solar system has moved so much since the early days of astronomy and astrology, the constellations do not correspond to the early astrology maps. The constellations appear shifted.

As a free info nugget: In case your life is ruled by astrology, whatever sign you think you are, you are not.